Relative to Empowerment projects, Voice has supported a total of 189 Influencing projects and 185 Innovate and Learn projects. We continued to struggle with the uptake of the sudden opportunity grant. This is evidenced by the low grant volume and projects (47). This failure is teaching the Voice programme valuable lessons about the limits of our current grant management system to respond to emergency opportunities and threats. These are planned to be documented for further learning. Finally, the Empowerment Accelerator grants are low in budget volume and projects due to their relatively recent initiation in 2021. The basis of Empowerment grants is to offer seed funding that will enable rightsholder-led organisations to kickstart or ramp-up their nascent initiatives towards furthering inclusion for themselves and their communities. While a majority of these grants went to smaller, communi- ty-based organisations, we noted the sharp increase and need for these grants globally, evidenced from the high volume of applications. In Kenya for instance, while we planned to support up to as many as 12 rightsholder-led projects, the team received over 160 applications. Similarly, in Indonesia the team launched a special Empowerment call for proposals to explore #Artivism as a powerful tool for self-advocacy of rightsholders and artists: V-21169-ID-EM Power in Artivism CfP. This call received over 125 applications over a wide geographical reach, with groups applying from Papua, Sambas- Kalimantan, Pare-Pare Sulawesi, and Banda Naira.
Innovate & Learn grants support rightsholder groups who want to test, scale and share new inclusive approaches. In 2022, we released six new calls for proposals to invite new innovations, re-engage the Linking & Learning Facilitator organisations who work hand-in-hand with the other grantee partners, and launch the second edition of the national NOW-Us! Awards. After the success- ful rollout of the national NOW-Us! Awards in 2021, the Voice teams in Cambodia, Laos, and Kenya added a second cohort of NOW-Us! Award winners while Nigeria, Mali and Niger made the award for the first time. In addition to the NOW-Us! Awards, Voice in Uganda issued a call for proposals titled ‘Mentally Mindful’ which sought to support inclusive and bold ideas around innovative integration of mental health into programme, policy and practice. Similarly in Mali, an Innovate and Learn call for propos- als was issued to support projects that use digital technologies to improve access to education and economic empowerment for right- sholder groups. It bears mentioning that these two calls for proposals were issued in response to the fall- out from the COVID-19 pandemic. Innovate & Learn grants
Empowerment Accelerator grants are described as the sister/gradu- ation grant to our Empowerment grants. These have been instru- mental in scaling up projects that have just picked up momentum in their empowerment phase, they have helped drive bold solutions to existing problems, and galvanised partnerships that might have begun in probably the final phase of the Empowerment grants. The design of the accelerator grants has proved useful in considering projects or programs that have proven to have a longer life span than just 12 months and thus created opportunities for rightsholders to think through the impact and sustainable solutions with regard to deepening their movement building. In Uganda, three former grantee partners and in Nigeria seven former grantee partners who previously received Empowerment grants were support- ed with a second round of funding to upscale and deepen their efforts. Empowerment Accelerator
Influencing grants seek to strengthen the lobby and advocacy capacities of organisations to better represent, include, and amplify the rightshold- ers’ voices. Approvals were made for 12 Influencing projects in Niger, Uganda, and Tanzania. Only one Influencing call for proposals was published in 2022 at the multi-coun- try level aimed at contributing to the strengthening of the LGBTI rights movement in West Africa. This call for proposal aimed to address a gap in Voice’s programming thus far and will take further shape in 2023 in the form of 15 Empowerment grants to be made in the Voice focus countries to LGBTI rightsholder-led organi- sations. A final note on Influencing grants is that the majority of approv- als for this grant type were made in 2021 to allow for the implementation period of 18-36 months required by this grant type. Influencing grants
Sudden Opportunity grants respond to specific, unanticipated opportu- nities and threats through collective action remained open in the exten- sion phase. Four calls for proposals were released, two in Cambodia and one each in Indonesia and Niger. However, no contracts could be awarded as the projects received did not fulfil the criteria highlighted at the start. Sudden Opportunity grants
Poster featuring the NOW-Us! Awards Round II Winners from Laos.
Ms Chanhpheng Sivila, Founder and Director of the Lao Disabled Women’s Development Centre during the second round of the Now-Us! Awards in Laos
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